All references cited in this specification, and their references, are incorporated by reference herein where appropriate for appropriate teachings of additional or alternative details, features, and/or technical background.
Disclosed in embodiments described herein is a security output stacker tray system that allows for a changeable lock to be generated for one or more lockable trays in the stacker system upon request for confidential treatment of output. Also disclosed in embodiments is a security output stacker tray operatively associated with a hardcopy disposal device such as a shredder that is activated after a set period of time to dispose of output in the security output stacker that has not been collected with such set period of time.
Remote printing of documents, whether through a copier, printer or other imaged sheet production devices, is known. Remote shared user printing and mailbox systems in which various users can send their electronic print jobs from different locations to be printed at the shared remote printer are also known. The problem of sorting, that is ordering a print job, and then stacking such print jobs, is made more complex by remote printing in particular when more than one print request is received at a time. Remote printing also suffers from the inability of persons to avoid their output being read, or even accidentally taken, by other users, or commingled together into one stacking tray.
A problem associated with shared remote imaged sheet production device use is that job output may become mixed up, or accidentally removed by others, even if the jobs are initially offset. Such problem has led to some users using manual mailboxes, like Post Office boxes, adjacent the imaged sheet production device with the boxes labeled with different user names for manual job sorting.
To avoid the need for manual job sorting, some systems make use of “mailboxing” wherein a particular output tray or shelve is temporarily or permanently assigned a unique and predetermined electronic address enabling a particular user's output of one or more jobs to be directed into a particular bin or bins assigned to the user. That is, multiple print jobs from a printer, copier, user terminals, fax, network image device, scanner etc., are separated by user and the hardcopy outputted into individual bins for individual users or user groups. The user is then informed of which bin in the mailbox unit the job can be located. The system may be programmed to electronically recognize the sender or user terminal sending the print job. Hard-copy or sheets produced by remote printing is generally outputted into a non-secure stacker system, that while possibly separating the output from other output by, for example, inserting cover sheets at the beginning and/or end of a print job, does not prevent viewing of the documents produced by persons in the vicinity of the imaged sheet production device.
Some systems include a number of elected or assigned lockable mailboxes in the output stacker into which hard copy print jobs generated by the printer are feed into to protect the documents from viewing by unauthorized persons and to maintain confidentiality. The mailbox system can automatically stack respective print jobs of respective users of the printer into designated mailbox bins designated for the respective users such that the print jobs are secured from reading and removal by other users. The system may also make use of “variable bin assignment” in which many users can share a mailbox unit with a limited number of bins by viable (dynamic) bin assignment based on the availability of a bin, that is whether the bin has room for the output, rather than a fixed, permanent assignment of certain bins to certain users or customers. Variable bin assignment increases the effective capacity or the number of potential shared users. Overflow bins may thus be assigned if a subsequent job by the user will not fit into the previously assigned bin or tray. The mailbox bins may be unlocked either with a manual key or electronically by entry of a unique access code for a particular user or group of users and/or the system administrator, that is uniquely assigned to one of the secure stacker trays.
Manual key and unique assigned codes to a bin inherently suffer from security problems themselves. A manual key system inherently relies on an administrator of the system to supply the key to the correct user or to obtain output from the correct bin and supply the output to the correct user. Such system inherently allows the administrator to review the secured documents or any other person with access to the manual key. Unique assigned electronic access codes can be memorized by previous users who can then gain access into the secured bins and review the materials of others.
Security bins also suffer from the need to be periodically purged of material when output is not ultimately or timely retrieved by a user. Security bins must be periodically emptied to allow access to secured bins by other users of the system as the number of security bins is generally limited. Purging is generally assigned to an administrator who is provided a means to access each of the trays. In the purging process the secured output is readily viewable by the administrator, or the person assigned by the administrator to do the purging, and anyone else who happens to review the purged undestroyed documents.
There is need therefore for an improved security bin stacking system that allows for enhanced security of the system.